7 Ways To Improve Your Cold Email Game

So you’re looking to acquire new clients, but you’re either not sure where to start or you’re not quite confident enough yet to start cold calling. Either way I totally understand your pain, I myself have found myself in the same boat on many occasions. Luckily for you, in this post i’ll be sharing some useful cold email tips that you can start sending to potential clients today, in order to increase your email open rate & client conversions too.

The biggest bit of advice I could give you right of the bat, is that cold emailing is a numbers game. You’ve got to understand that business owners are likely to receive endless amounts of emails each week, even moreso if they’re on some sort of email list, and are going to grow tired of each and every sales pitch that hits their inbox. With that being said you’ll need to be patient and understand that a lot of people are going to either ignore you or tell you that they’re not interested. You’ve got to look past that if you want to succeed with cold emailing.

Sending a cold email to a potential client

A lot of the tips that I will share with you may grow stale as my blog continues to grow, if everyone who reads this post puts into action everything I’ve said to the letter, then you may find that your cold emails no longer work as business owners will have become smart to your template emails. Instead you need to apply the lessons that I am teaching, and begin to think outside the box for yourself. Take note of the reasons behind each tip, and less so about the examples that I have provided. If you can learn to stand-out on email, then you’ll give yourself a crucial advantage over your competitors.

#1 – Make the subject line enticing

The first thing that the prospective client will see is the subject line, so you’ll need to make sure that it’s enticing enough for them to open up your email in the first place. I like to keep things real simple by just using a subject line like “Question” or even “<no subject>”. At the end of the day they’re still going to open up those emails because they’re now curious as to what’s inside.

Better yet, I also like to add the recipient’s name into the email subject too. Why? Well as previously mentioned, business owners can grow old of receiving spam email after spam email, with many entrepreneurs sending template emails out to every man and his dog. That’s why it can be important to add in the tiny detail of including the recipient’s name, as it will help to stand out amongst other generic emails.

It’s worth reiterating that you need to get creative with these tips, as you’re not the only one using them and pretty soon it’ll be counter-productive for you if everyone starts doing the same thing. Learn the psychology behind what I am suggesting, and begin to come up with your own ideas.

#2 – Add some personality

Following on from my previous point, nothing says ‘template’ like an email without any names or references. Take the time to find out the name of who you’re talking to, and what their business is called. Be sure to include these two points in the greeting & body of your email to show that you genuinely meant to get in touch with them – and them alone.

An example of a standard greeting would be like “Hey Mike”, or if you wanted to be more formal you could go with “Dear Mike”. Either way, you’ve made it clear who you’re talking to which is one step better than going with a vague “Hey” or “Dear all”.

A great way to add some personality to your emails is to compliment them on something they did, for instance you could say “Hey Mike, I recently read your blog post on cold emailing and just wanted to say thank you, your tips helped me acquire a couple of clients already”. You see how you’ve already differentiated yourself from all of the other emails that the client might have received, you’ve already inserted yourself into their good books by putting them in a good mood. At the same time though, make sure that your compliment is genuine – do it for the right reasons!

#3 – Keep it short

Given that I just told you to be personal in your emails, you might feel pressured into writing an entire bible-worth of text to your prospect. Don’t do it. When you’re working in B2B you need to be aware that your potential client is likely to be a busy individual, therefore you can’t afford to waste their time with your cold email. If they open up your email only to find that it’s going to take them 7 hours and 15 days to read it, then they’re likely to click the Trash button quicker than you can say Sinéad O’Connor.

As time goes on you’ll gradually learn how to say more when saying less, which is a great skill to have and one that I recommend you learn when cold emailing. The quickest way of doing this is to give people the results, not the services. What do I mean by this? Well i’m referring to the fact that many entrepreneurs will list endless amount of services that they can provide, often leaving the client confused (or bored). Instead, you should focus on the expected results that you can create for the client in just a sentence or two.

#4 – Try to help, not to sell.

So many people try to sell right out of the gate, and it’s often just the wrong way to go. Don’t get me wrong there are exceptions to this if your email is exceptional, but otherwise I’d say it’s best to take the more patient approach.

When you change your focus from selling, to helping, you instantaneously give yourself an advantage as you’re separating yourself from the thousands of other emails that fill up your prospect’s inbox. So if you’re mentioning prices, specific services or deadlines then it’s likely that you’re going to get ignored.

When I email businesses that i’d like to work with, I tend to mention that I’ve done an audit of their business and that I would appreciate a 30 seconds phone call with them to advise on how I could help them increase their sales. A key part of the email is that I tell them that if they’re not interested, then they are more than welcome to reply with “No”. As I said earlier, sales is a numbers game, so you need to have a nonchalant view towards each prospect.

To take this one step further, I go back to the very first email I sent out when starting my business. Basically I reached out to someone I hadn’t seen since my school days, in fact we never spoke at the time, and my email was basically advising him on a number of ways that he could improve his website and convert more sales. Due to my selfless advice, he ended up becoming a client of mine and has been ever since.

With that being said, it may be worth sending fewer yet more-meaningful emails to your prospective clients if there’s a client that you really want to work with. If you’re going to send any suggestions or what not, to avoid sending a really long email, I would add your suggestions in an attachment instead.

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#5 – Add a signature

A great way of securing more business is to optimise your email signature, to give the viewer a clearer idea of what you do and how you can help. I myself like to include a link or two to specific sales pages on my website, that apply specifically to the type of client that I’m emailing. For instance if I was contacting dentists with the intention of acquiring them as a client for my online marketing services, I may include a link in my signature that directs them to a landing page specific for marketing results achieved within the dentistry niche.

If you want to take this one step further, then you can set up a paid advertising strategy to retarget any users that have visited the link in your email signature, with the purpose being to ensure that you convert said website visitor into a paying customer. The reason being is that most people don’t end up purchasing at the first-time of asking, so by retargeting people that haven’t already expressed a (slight) interest in your services (by clicking on the link), you’ll have much greater success in trying to convert them – than trying to target absolute strangers.

Much like the rest of the email though, don’t go overboard with the signature. Keep it clean and easy to read. Too much clutter could result in your links or information being skipped over, albeit unintentionally. In this case, less is more.

Please be advised that depending on the reputation of your email address, the addition of hyperlinks in your emails could put you at risk of them ending up in the recipient’s spam folder. You can test out your email’s chances of being delivered using this tool.

#6 – Warm up your cold emails

To improve your chances of acquiring new clients, you’ll want to ensure that you’re emailing people that actually want to hear from you. For the sake of clarification, a cold email is an email to a contact that doesn’t even know that you exist (yet), despite how much research you may or may have not done. There are many ways that you could warm up your lead, the easiest of which is to consistently interact with them on social media. Do they like to post content on Linkedin? Well, make sure to drop some comments and really engage with them.

The best way to warm up the lead, is to have them come to you! To do this, it requires a lot of work in building up your reputation as an expert in your industry. It also requires you to build a simple funnel which makes it easy for them to 1) understand what you do, 2) know how you can help them and 3) easily get in touch with you. As you continue to gain experience you may learn a few tips & tricks on how to improve your funnel, however if you’re looking to shortcut this learning curve then feel free to get in touch with me here.

#7 – Don’t spam

It should go without saying that you shouldn’t spam random email address in the hope that you’ll ‘catch’ one. Even though cold emailing is a numbers game, it’s worth taking the time to narrow down who you’re sending emails to, as a well-written cold email to a dozen or so potential clients is going to perform a lot better than an ‘okay’ email to 1,000’s.

It’s also worth mentioning that it’s perfectly fine to follow up with contacts that haven’t responded after a few days, in fact you’re likely to increase your conversion rates in doing so as it may be a case that the person didn’t see your first email, or they forgot to get back to you first-time round. Where I draw the line though is if they don’t respond to the second email or they straight-up tell you that they’re not interested. Know when to move on, you’ll save yourself time in doing so.

Conclusion

Although sales and cold emailing is a numbers game, you should take the time to personalise your cold email to your potential client. With the careful use of short, to the point, subject lines and email copy, you can increase your client conversion rate and increasing your revenues in no time.

Did you learn anything new from this cold emailing post? If so, I’d love to hear your feedback in the comment section below!

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